Thursday, 31 July 2014

On 6 August, after a decade-long journey through space, ESA’s Rosetta
will become the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet.
Members of the media are invited to join ESA at its European Space
Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to mark this momentous
occasion.

Since its launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on
2 March 2004, Rosetta has travelled more than six billion kilometres,
passing by Earth three times and Mars once, and flying past two
asteroids.

For the most distant part of the journey, when it travelled out to the
orbit of Jupiter, Rosetta was put into deep-space hibernation for
31 months, waking up on 20 January 2014 for the final leg of its epic
journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
Now, with less than 10 000 km to go, Rosetta is preparing to arrive at its destination.Read more...